


Grand Theft Gallifrey

by HawkMoth



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s06e04 The Doctor's Wife, Gen, Written in May 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 06:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/758252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawkMoth/pseuds/HawkMoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and the TARDIS: how it all began.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grand Theft Gallifrey

At the time of testing, when a child is brought before the Untempered Schism, one of three things will happen.

Time Lords know this. It is one of the basic laws of their existence, a foundation stone of their culture, a thing they can always believe in.

Yet for all their individual intelligence and collective wisdom, Time Lords are not infallible, and throughout their entire history, they overlooked three things:

There are all sorts of inspiration.

There are many degrees of madness.

And over the course of a near-immortal lifetime, it's very hard to determine when running away actually begins.

******

The Time Lord initiate was brilliant. Everyone thought so--his family, the Examiners, his first teachers and advanced instructors at the Academy, his fellow Prydonians. So clever, so intuitive, so curious. And something else, a seldom-used word among Time Lords.

Unpredictable.

His educational progress was followed carefully, but beyond some difficulty in getting him to listen or always show the proper respect for the Laws of Time, he didn't cause much trouble. His field reports from observational expeditions were rather lengthy, and not as detached as they should have been. (They also tended to be full of suggestions for assisting various races out of the trouble they were often in. These were, of course, ignored.) He also developed a very unique style for piloting TT-capsules, and displayed a distinct fondness for the older models. 

Eventually, however, he began to exhibit more of the proper behavior becoming a mature Gallifreyan, and as years turned to decades and decades began to roll over into centuries, it seemed less likely that he would ever cause the sort of scandal his people rarely experienced. Not turn... _renegade_ , that other word Time Lords hated to use. Not like a few before him, or those classmates who it was regretfully realized hadn't been watched closely enough.

So when the Time Lord sometimes known as Theta Sigma, who after receiving his degree and studying discreetly on other planets occasionally called himself "the Doctor," did the unthinkable (abduct a member of his family, steal a timeship and embark on voluntary exile), it came as a complete surprise.

It really shouldn't have.

******

She may have been outmoded, she may have been obsolete, but she was a beauty and she knew it. The Type-40 Time Travel Capsules had at one time been the peak of Time Lord technology, and she had been the culmination of the program, the very best one grown in the Blackhole Shipyard. But despite the generally solid, stolid and oft-times rigid nature of Time Lords, they were still thinkers and tinkerers, so science and technology moved on, and there was always something bigger and better to be created.

So she became a relic, something used to educate the very youngest children, to remind the older ones of the continued greatness of their race. A museum piece.

But she and all her sisters, the old and the new, could never be discarded or completely dismantled. Their link with the Eye of Harmony, the power of each ship's own Matrix, all that artron and huon energy had to be maintained and contained to prevent unimaginable disaster. It could be reduced or dampened, but never destroyed. 

The Time Lords had made them all sentient, and such destruction would have been murder.

Yet being taken out of commission had been nearly as bad. She hated it. She missed the Vortex and all glories it had shown her throughout time and space. She missed her first team of pilots and her last, and all the ones in between. Sitting here unused and forgotten was a slow death. Time Lords came, grew old and changed, while all she could do was watch and remember.

Until he came.

She'd noticed a few like him before, their minds overflowing with very un-Time Lord like thoughts. She could sense what the Schism had done to them in their childhoods and it grieved her. When they were near, she locked her doors and shut away her thoughts. They were not for stealing, the ones who were so very mad.

But the other...he was just mad enough. Oh, his thoughts were so like hers! So much he wanted to see, to do, so many places and times he longed to go. And he talked to her, in words, and she almost always understood. To him, her doors were always open. 

The ship knew he liked her. When Type-40's were used for instruction, he always came back to her. He may have used what he learned when he flew in newer models, but he always came back to study her console and learn more. Even powered down, she tried to communicate her wishes, sending telepathic tendrils into his mind.

_You can restore my power...we can fly together...there's so much to see out there...I will wait until you are ready._

He came back, year after long year, coming into his maturity slowly as they all did and although his mind seemed open to her, he never responded the way she hoped for. When it did finally happen, it was not in the way she had imagined.

She felt his presence nearby, late one night when no one should have been about. He was not alone, but she sensed no real danger, only an odd excitement in his mind and that of his companion. In fact, there was something strange yet pleasing in that other mind.

Slowly, she let her doors swing open.

He entered with cautious steps, a young girl-child following closely. He came forward to the console, and pulled the lever to shut the doors, then turned back to the child.

"It's all right," he said to the girl. "We're safe here. They won't find us."

"Are we going to travel?"

Such a mind in that tiny body! The ship diverted what power she could to the telepathic circuits and scanners to study her more closely. The brain engrams and genetic signatures were a very close match to his, and the ship knew what that meant. She knew the word.

Family. They belonged together. She listened to them.

"Yes, we'll travel," he said.

The child looked around the console room. "Time ship. Time and relative dimension in space. TARDIS!"

"Yes, you always liked that word, didn't you? So do I."

"But I was supposed to go to school."

"Well, we'll travel a bit first, shall we? Then we'll find somewhere for you to go to school."

"All right."

He led her to a bench in a corner of the console room. "Now you wait here, while I get things ready."

The child nodded and sat, waiting patiently.

The Time Lord turned back to the console, and the ship heard his thoughts and felt his anger.

_What were they thinking? Most gifted of her generation, and they see no harm in presenting her to the Schism two years early. Idiots! Blind fools! They won't have her just to satisfy their scientific curiosity. Not while I live. Not while I can get away at last._

He put his hands on the controls. "I can do this," he said softly. "We can do this."

 _Yes,_ the ship answered him. _We can._

He moved from station to station, and she showed him the way.

_Restore my power._

_Set coordinates beyond Kasterborous, one mark removed from relative galactic time._

_Raise the shields._

_Bypass the induction barriers._

His hands finally rested on the dematerialization controls. He glanced back at the child, now curled up asleep on the bench. "We'll keep her safe."

_We will._

"Time to go, you beautiful old girl." He eased the lever forward, smiling. "TARDIS. My TARDIS."

_My thief._

There was a brilliant noise, and they were gone.

******

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still more of an Old Skool Who fan, but thank you, Neil Gaiman, for the lovely inspiration.


End file.
